You're listening to the I Pray with the Gospel Sunday Reflection on the St. Jose Maria Institute podcast.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence.

I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time a prayer fruitful.

My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

The Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A reading from the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2.

His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. from the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2.

His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover,

and when he was 12 years old, they went up according to custom.

And when the feast had ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem.

After three days, they found him in the temple, And when they saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, son, why have you treated us so?

Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously. Imagine how Mary must have felt searching for Jesus for those three long days.

Her anxiety, her immaculate heart was full of love for Jesus, and suffered at his absence.

But her heart is also full of love for us, and she suffers when we are far away from God.

As St. Louis Demofford explains,

if you put all the love of all the mothers into one heart, it still would not equal the love

of the heart of Mary for her children. You have a place in her immaculate heart, and so now,

if you are lost, she is in distress until she gets you back.

Mary's immaculate heart is their refuge of sinners.

They say of the whale that when she sees her young in peril, she opens her mouth and receives

it into her to protect it.

...